"Our long range outlook suggested that it would be warmer and dryer than average, but that's a long way from suggesting that we were going to continue with heatwave conditions, and obviously we did see part of the month with very dry and warm conditions."

"We certainly weren't predicting a heatwave for the whole of August."

The Met Office say that its long-range outlooks are mostly aimed at supporting industries such as aviation and construction and should not be relied upon as detailed forecasts.

It also claimed that this year has been difficult for meteorologists because of unusual phenomena like the summer months' punishingly high temperatures and the freezing Beast from the East in February.

But the public are showing little sympathy.

Danny Marland wrote: "Fuming 'cause this is the first day in ages I haven't taken an umbrella out with me. [The Met Office] said no rain in Manchester. Liars. Crimes against humanity."

Graham from the Met Office said: "We obviously need the public's trust on providing forecasts, but clearly there are limits to what meteorological science is able to provide at this moment in time, and we're quite clear that we can provide forecasts with a reasonable degree of accuracy out to five or seven days, but beyond that it's not possible to determine exactly what the weather is going to be like.

"In terms of apologising to the public, it's not fair to put us in that position because we haven't given a month-long forecast for August which promised a heatwave."